Simple Website Optimizations to Grow Your Sales (Part I)

April 15, 2019

Pop quiz: what’s the best way to improve the return on your advertising spending?

Simple. You 1) increase the number of sales among the users who are already coming to your website, and 2) you increase the value of what they order.

Easier said than done? Of course. But it’s important to capitalize on every second of the consumer journey on your site. Especially if you are sending visitors to your site with paid advertising, you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of that investment.

Looking to increase conversion rates, engagements, and referrals? You can achieve the results you’re looking to accomplish with slight updates to your website.

Our revenue optimization process is a holistic approach designed to drive more sales and improve return on advertising spend (ROAS.) We’d love to walk you through the process, but here are a few simple solutions you can implement today. If you need some help, just let us know.

There’s always an Opportunity to
Increase the Value of an Order

In this first part of our series, let’s begin by looking at ways to optimize your site with the goal of maximizing cart size. This increases your average order value, or AOV, which is calculated as:

TOTAL REVENUE DIVIDED BY THE TOTAL NUMBER OF ORDERS

Then, once you know your AOV, you can use that as a benchmark to determine what you can spend on acquiring new customers. As it goes up, you can invest the returns back into growing your audience.

Order Bumps

Order bumps are additional product offerings that can be selected using a simple checkbox. Not all eCommerce platforms allow you to place these on the checkout page (Shopify does not), but they’re easy to display directly on a product page. One obvious place is to add a checkbox directly above the “Add to Cart” button. Or, you can automate an order bump to appear immediately after the item has been added to a cart. In the example photo above from ShadyRays, the offer for the case appears after a pair of sunglasses has been added to the cart.

Order bumps can be both upselling and cross-selling opportunities for you, and create a smoother experience for the customer, who can add additional products without having to locate them organically.

Priority Shipping -OR- Handling

Shipping and handling provide a great opportunity for upselling. If you can provide faster shipping, you should definitely be offering it to your customers. But if your fulfillment process can’t allow for priority shipping, consider offering an upsell for priority or expedited handling, which ensures an order will be moved to the top of the list for processing. Now that two-day shipping has become the norm, the ability to get one’s order in the mail the next day is an enticing offer.

Another way to up AOV is to provide free shipping once a shopper has reached an order minimum: a free shipping threshold. In effect, this works the opposite of the priority handling above. Instead of adding shipping/handling upsell at the end, you encourage shoppers to meet a certain value so that they don’t have to pay for shipping. There are several designs that work, such as pop-up bar on the top of the page, or a responsive countdown near the cart (eg. “only $8 more for free shipping”) . Experiment to see which works best for you.

Increase Volume with Multi-Packs

Increasing volume works great if you offer relatively low-cost, consumable goods. Instead of listing a quantity dropdown or empty field, try pre-grouping products into multiples. So, rather than giving the option to purchase 1-9+ units, offer products in packages of 1, 3, and 6, or 1, 5, and 8.

You should provide a discount for quantity. Your cart value increases, and the customer is happy to receive then highlight one of the middle options as “most popular” or “best seller” to encourage the customer to select a higher volume. Be sure to experiment to see how highlighting each offering in different ways affects sales.

Try a One-Click Post-Purchase Upsell

These must be handled tastefully, but they can work great. The idea here is: once a customer has completed their checkout entirely, you provide a new, different offer that can be added to their original order. This is unique in one key way: it doesn’t disrupt funneling the customer to purchase. They have already completed their intended transaction, so there’s no barrier or chance of cart abandonment. By making the offer one-click, they won’t have any additional order hassle or information to enter, increasing the chance they might seize the opportunity. Use it wisely, but use it well.

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Stay tuned for parts II and III of this series, where we’ll dig a little deeper and address other areas of your site. See you soon.